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The sun’s still not quite set

SINCE 1946, the United Nations has compiled a list of the world's “Non-Self-Governing Territories”: overseas domains it considers, in effect, to be colonies. Since then 100-odd entries have come and gone. Leavers may gain full independence (such as Cameroon or Singapore) or merge more or less fully with their parent nation (Puerto Rico or French Guiana). Today the number of entries has dwindled to just 15, most of which are British, or 16 if you include ambiguous Western Sahara.

Only three of the remaining listings are the subject of conflicting claims by other nations. Two are British-ruled; the third is Western Sahara. The dispute between Britain and Argentina over sovereign rights to the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) turned into war in 1982. It flared up this month with the publication of tit-for-tat open letters in national newspapers. Britain's Foreign Office has also recently complained to the Spanish government over incursions into Gibraltar's territorial waters. Achieving self-determination through referenda for both territories was listed as a priority in the British Government’s mid-term review on January 7th. The Falkland Islanders are due to vote in March.

Such territorial disputes usually centre on history and the inhabitants' choice of national identity, but also geography: the territory's proximity to the claimant's national boundaries and its distance from the “occupying country’s” shores. As the graphic below demonstrates, the distances between administrative capitals and their listed territories are indeed vast. The Falkland Islands' capital Stanley lies some 12,650 km from London. Luckily for Britain and other former imperial powers, proximity is not the defining factor in deciding rightful rule (and if it were, the entire UN list of territories—and previous versions—would be up for grabs).

The UN lists only inhabited territory. A host of other, unpopulated, territories would be open to scrutiny on grounds of proximity, or lack of it: swathes of Antarctica for example. Norway's Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic is the most remote island on the planet, lying furthest from any other land mass. But at a meagre 12,700 km from Oslo it cannot compete with some inhabited British, French or American islands for the furthest distance from the motherland.

Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Falklands, and now Diego Garcia are strategic assets:
They are Unsinkable Air Craft Carriers in the middle of geographic critical theaters.
Similar to the isles of Great Britain was in WWII which halted Hitler's expansion.
Hard to invade.
Easy to defend.
And ruling the skies is the new tactical high ground for artillery.
Diego Garcia is the busiest airbase in the War on Terror--critical to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and the Strait of Hormuz.
Guam has more B-52s than any other airbase for the last 50 years.
Bahrain has a huge US Navy arsenal itching for Iranian action.
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Add Gibraltar, Oman, Singapore, Panama, and Hong Kong for their strategic position at critical global trade chokepoints--though they may be a peninsular.
All former British Colonies.
All critical to global trade.
All free wheeling economies thriving today.
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Some islands may not be blessed with land, labor or capital,
but as in real estate, Location may be everything.

Why do you think the existing colonies and semi-colonies states of today are referred to as "non-self governing territories"? (Insidiously suggesting that what's "wrong" with these states is that they are presently not self-governing. Implying that the moral thing that would put everything right is that these colonies become self-ruled, and not that they be returned to the nations that possessed them before they were colonized.)

The hegemonic western powers have such an overwhelming influence (euphemism for control) over the UN unwittingly labels such colonies as such so that countries as the US, UK, France, and Japan (yes, Okinawa is actually a colony) can prepare the world to accept self-rule by these states as and when the Colonial powers could no longer hold on to their colonies. So, the Argentinian people has better be prepared psychologically for Malvinas to be declared a new-born self-governing state, unless the Argentinian nation and people is willing to grit their teeth and develop a backbone to stand-up for their territorial integrity.

How to do that? The only tenable answer to that is "might". Do you think Hong Kong would have been declared an independent state or a SAR (special adminstrative region) of China had it not been that China was already strong enough to take it back from UK in 1997? Let me tell you that when the UK PM Thatcher and her FM Geoff Howe were contemplating what they could do when the Chinese leader Deng Xiao Ping requested for the return of HK to China, he basically said to Thatcher thus:- You can either return HK to China and we could have a good relationship and trade, or you can refuse, and we will take it back a little while later, but it would be calamitous to your national interests. Guess what the UK decided based on the reality of the relative national strength of the two at the time?
Say what you like, nothing succeeds like national power. Nations like the US knows that very well. That's why she spent an awful lot on her military (more than the rest of the world together). Countries like UK and France also knows that, hence they cede their national sovereignty to some extent for the "umbrella" power that the EU could possibly represent. (Though yet to be seen in the future if that is in itself a terrible miscalculation for UK and France, as I don't think it will work that way when national self-interests always trumps collective interests.) Forget about the veneer of civility that the West would have you believe. The law of the international order is and has always been that the strong dictates to the weak.

I hope by now, people in the 3rd world, would begin to think critically enough to realise that the so-called "free" democracies have always assume that they have the god-given right to rule over children of lesser gods.
The Western media is a machine that is so well-oiled that the uncritical reader would be persuaded to think that anything other than a world based on Western political and economic rules is socially and morally unacceptable, or at the very least patently undesirable. They often quote such repugnant and recalcitrant colonialist like Churchill, as if what he says is beyond reprove. And yet, I hear, an Indian social scientist, happily quoting Churchill as if he was someone wise and with leadership quality. The truth, however, is that he was a man of the war time, after which even the British people immediately threw him out of power when the War was over.
Nations who were or are so irked by such Western hypocrisy that they in their "stupid" desperation, retaliated politically and/or militarily were /are typically branded as "axes of evil" states. Such states were then punished through brutal sanctions, orchestrated by the West through the UN mechanism, such that their economies were ruined, after which they are then also shown as failed states.
Now, consider what regions like Africa and South America can do. IN both these continents are two nations that are also in the BRICS. Unity amongst the nations in these regions is essential to counter the blocs of nations the two developed economies of the world - the European Union and the United States of America. Only two other individual nations (as opposed to regions) in the world has the capacity and strength to stand alone against such steamroller-like oppression - Russia and China, by virtue of their military+land-resource in Russia's case, and population+land-resource in China's case.

Spain has no business disputing Gibraltar. The people of Gibraltar have zero desire to join Spain. Moreover, the Treaty of Utrecht clearly states that the territory belongs to Britain "in perpetuity." That language was reaffirmed in subsequent treaties as well. READ BEFORE YOU SIGN.

The British landed there in 1690. Ridley only said that because he was not confident in Britain's ability to deter an invasion. Troutbeck was being hyperbolic. The British got there first. Case closed.

Colonial plebiscites are slanted when the colonists are from original colonial stock. They are a cop out for the colonial powers. For instance, the British Government pays lip service to the inhabitants of the Falklands/Malvinas as being the ones who will decide their fate while in the Indian Ocean the inhabitants of Diego Garcia, another British possession, were unceremoniously removed wholesale from their homes because the US evinced an interest in locating one of its many military bases there and the British were only to happy to oblige. So much for inhabitants' wishes.

What an absolute load of old tosh. Also disjointed, fallacious and more than a little bitter and twisted. You start by slagging off those countries that historically held power and end up by advocating it for the BRICS.

Plus, you can't seriously be promoting China and Russia as role models for the future over the EU and USA.

The Malvinas/Falklands are unquestionably Argentine. Historians and British diplomats alike have acknowledged as much throughout the 20th century. Were it otherwise, why would Nicholas Ridley have conducted negotiations to return sovereignty to Argentina prior to the 1982 war? Why would the British even entertain the idea? If the British claim is as rock-solid as they claim, why change it from prior discovery to acquisitive prescription? Why would Gerald Spicer say that the "Argentine Government’s attitude is not altogether unjustified, and that our action has been somewhat high-handed”? Why would John Troutbeck say "It is therefore not easy to explain our possession without showing ourselves up as international bandits.”? These are not Argentines, these are British FCO officials saying this! Why would the British ambassador to Argentina Malcolm Robinson state “I assumed that our right to the Falkland Islands was unassailable. This is very far from being the case.”?

The islanders are British - and as such they have every right to self-determination as every other British subject does: on British soil. The Malvinas/Falklands were discovered by Spain, administered by Spanish Buenos Aires, and became independent from Spain just like all the other island territories of Buenos Aires. No power which has uncontested claim over a territory would switch the basis for their possession. They may militarise the South Atlantic all they wish, eventually they will need South American resources and Argentina will never, ever, accept British sovereignty, no matter how much they weaponise the archipelago.

The truth is plain to see: the Malvinas/Falklands are the rightful territory of Argentina - and British sovereignty is nothing more than a lie told at the point of a gun.

I wouldn't mention guns, considering the war in the 1980s was instigated by an Argentine Junta.
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And the British have exercised effective control over the islands for over 150 years, while a settler population exists there that wants to be British.
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So no, the islands are not unquestionably Argentine.
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If anything, the situation is closer to the opposite, in part due to Argentine actions back in the early 1980s.
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